The case for increased attention to and better management of sepsis is growing. As the first World Sepsis Congress convincingly demonstrated, international and national healthcare authorities, NGOs, policy makers, clinical scientists, researchers, and pioneers in healthcare improvement need to work together to reduce the burden of this disease. Patients and family members are also among […]
Florence Wilcock: Improving maternity care is everybody’s business
Personalised care. Continuity of care. Safer care. Better postnatal and perinatal mental healthcare. Multiprofessional working. Working across boundaries. A fair payment system. This vision of care could apply to pretty much any healthcare service: it is essentially individualised care with seamless coordination across whatever professional or geographic boundaries may exist. In fact, these are the […]
Ahmed Rashid: The UK junior doctor contract dispute in 10 hashtags
Hashtag: #iminworkjeremy Description: When Jeremy Hunt (Secretary of State for health) accused the NHS of having a “Monday to Friday culture,” healthcare workers from across the country posted selfies of themselves busy at work on their weekend shifts. Example: @trentconsultant #ImInWorkJeremy been round with registrar. Every patient seen. All poorly ones or who need decision […]
Daoxin Yin: A long way to go to help people with depression in China
At the last mid Autumn festival holiday—a traditional festival for a family reunion in China—a young actor and singer with a promising future committed suicide at the age of 28. He had been diagnosed with depression and treated for many years. In response to his last blog on Sina Weibo—a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook with hundreds of […]
Richard Smith: The challenge of high need, high cost patients
A challenge to all health systems is how best to manage “high need, high cost patients,” a term developed by the Commonwealth Fund. Its president, David Blumenthal, discussed the best response in last week’s annual health lecture of Imperial College’s Institute of Global Health Innovation. The first reason for caring about such patients is that […]
Tom Solomon: The untold story of Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine
Most doctors encounter interesting or unusual patients whose amazing stories stay with them forever. I was fortunate to look after the world’s number one story teller, Roald Dahl, as his life was ending in 1990. During my nights on call, he and I would chat into the small hours, and became friends. For decades afterwards […]
Mathias Bonk: Who will become WHO’s new director general?
The nomination deadline for the next director general of the WHO has passed and six of WHO’s Member States have sent in nomination papers for their respective candidates. Three of these candidates, Tedros Ghebreyesus, the Ethiopian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sania Nishtar, former Minister for Science and Technology of Pakistan, and Phillipe Douste-Blazy, Chairman of […]
Andrew Green: Patients, GPs, and private medical insurance
You know, it’s hard not to feel sorry for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). Set up to allow GPs to commission services for their patients—as the ones with the best knowledge of what local needs are—CCGs have seen the continued drive to deliver more and more with less and less remove what little freedoms they may […]
Matthew Honeyman: Saving paper, saving money, or transforming care?
Yesterday we published a briefing on the digital agenda that has been pursued by the NHS since 2013 – the year Secretary of State for health Jeremy Hunt challenged the NHS to “go paperless.” We chart progress made to date and look at some of the barriers and opportunities presented. This comes two weeks after the Wachter […]
Tong Yongjun: Stop killing Chinese doctors
In less than three months four Chinese doctors have been killed by patients. In one case, a general physician’s 10 year-old child was also stabbed. Violence towards doctors is nothing new in China. The Lancet has been following the trend for years. Almost 50% of Chinese medical staff were insulted during their daily work. The Chinese […]